Resizing JPanel Form in NetBeans GUI Builder

Question

I have a JPanel Form in Netbeans and it has Jlists, JTextFields and JPanels on it. I want to divide the JFrame into four (or six or eight...) parts and place this JPanel Form into each of them. I visualized the job i want to do here.

I tried BorderLayout, GridLayout and GridBagLayout. However in any of them the JPanel and the components(Jlists, JTextFields and JPanels on it) don't change their size and shows only a part of it.

public class DynamicLineAndTimeSeriesChart extends ApplicationFrame implements ActionListener {

private TimeSeries series;
private double lastValue = 100.0;
private Timer timer = new Timer(10000, this);
GaugePanel panel; //*****That's the JPanel form I created by using NetBeans*****
//Note that GaugePanel extends javax.swing.JPanel
final ChartPanel chartPanel;//*****Since I need an xy-graph, I import jfree library
private Timer timer2 = new Timer(10000, this);
GaugePanel panel2;
final ChartPanel chartPanel2;

/**
 * Constructs a new dynamic chart application.
 *
 * @param title the frame title.
 */
public DynamicLineAndTimeSeriesChart(final String title) throws IOException {
    super(title);
    JFrame.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(true);
    Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
    setSize(screenSize.width, screenSize.height);
    setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    this.series = new TimeSeries("Random Data", Millisecond.class);
    JPanel bigpanel=new JPanel();
    GridLayout experimentLayout = new GridLayout(2,2);
    bigpanel.setLayout(experimentLayout);

    final TimeSeriesCollection dataset = new TimeSeriesCollection(this.series);              
    final JFreeChart chart = createChart(dataset);
    timer.setInitialDelay(1000);
    chart.setBackgroundPaint(Color.LIGHT_GRAY);
    panel = new GaugePanel();
    panel.init();
    chartPanel = new ChartPanel(chart);
    panel.getjPanel1().add(chartPanel);
    chartPanel.setPreferredSize(new java.awt.Dimension(367, 336));
    bigpanel.add(panel);
    timer.start();
    panel.setVisible(true);
    chartPanel.setVisible(true);

    final TimeSeriesCollection dataset2 = new TimeSeriesCollection(this.series);              
    final JFreeChart chart2 = createChart(dataset2);
    timer2.setInitialDelay(1000);
    chart2.setBackgroundPaint(Color.LIGHT_GRAY);
    panel2 = new GaugePanel();
    panel2.init();
    chartPanel2 = new ChartPanel(chart2);
    panel2.getjPanel1().add(chartPanel2);
    chartPanel2.setPreferredSize(new java.awt.Dimension(367, 336));
    bigpanel.add(panel2);
    timer2.start();
    panel2.setVisible(true);
    chartPanel2.setVisible(true);

    setContentPane(bigpanel);

    repaint();
    setVisible(true);
}

Answer 1

I believe this code snippet will help you to achieve what you are trying to achieve. Understand that a Component can only have 1 parent (ie added only once) and that adding it multiple times to the same Container is the same as removing it and adding it again

JFrame f = new JFrame("Test");
f.getContentPane().setLayout(new GridLayout(2,2));
Color[] colors = new Color [Color.RED, COLOR.GREEN, COLOR.BLUE, COLOR.BLACK];
for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
  JPanel jp = new JPanel();
  jp.setBackground(colors[i];
  f.getContentPane().add(jp);
}